tmiw

Considering that the vast majority of US issued cards do not have contactless support at all (and quite possibly never will, though the jury is still out on this), I'm going to call shenanigans on this. Not to mention that I've never heard of this being anywhere close to a serious problem in other countries where those cards are more common.

kayanco

Thank you dear moderator.

aquamarinesteph

Back in the day, a signed or unsigned card did matter. I worked retail for a bit. Not all the employees were equally diligent for checking for the signature, but I did. And then if the card wasn't signed, we had to ask for an alternative form of payment b/c signing the card in front of us didn't count. If the card was AmEx, we also were required to ask for a photo ID in order to process the card. Again, not everyone did, but I did. And I would refuse - legally by the terms of our store - to process an AmEx card if the user did not have a matching ID.

Now that you just shove the card into the machine yourself, I doubt it makes as much difference as it once did. Nobody is going to look at your card, but we still sometimes have people ask for an ID if the amount is over $X on the register. That varies greatly by store, but NONE of those people have checked the back for a signature.

Your mileage may vary, of course. But as long as you had an alternate form of payment available, I'd say you could probably take that gamble.

tmiw

I've heard that the USPS is one of the few places in the US that actually cares about signatures, come to think of it. I don't know how true that is now though.

kayanco

Maybe I'll find out and report back

I do need to go there soon anyway.

Happy

Of all these discussions, does it not occur to anyone that these days if you do sign anything when making purchase at a shop, you just scribble it on the pad of the POS, and the signature is not anything like you would have do it with real pen and paper?

So how is the "sign" thing even relevant?

I look at our cards, the strips at the back is so tiny, it is near impossible to sign with a proper signature. All our cards are unsigned. The only time I signed the card was in Europe or UK when the cashier wanted to compare a signature on a pictured ID to the signature panel of the card. That was at least 3 or 4 years ago.

I dont know who would carry a check book around. On top of that, the bank has fiduciary duty to verify the signature on the check matches the signature on the signature card in file. IF a thief forges your signature based on the signature on that tiny panel at the back of your CC, I seriously doubt the forged signature would be anything resemble to the one you have signed on the Signature Card when opening your bank account.

Even yourself, the signature would changes over times, often to the worse, much worse.

These days the signature is more for the purpose to verify you has read the T&Cs, agree and accept what are there, by signing the bottom so you cannot claim that you have not read / been informed and then accept/agree on what are put in front of you! That is all about it.
Nothing to do with anything to the security of your CC which, thanks to the strong consumer protection legislation on this particular matter, is zero liability of fraudulent charges to the cardholders. So what is to worry about?

kayanco

I agree mostly here.

I posed the original question based on two premises:

1. A signature on the back doesn't offer any real protection:
- No one checks if it's there, nor compares it against a receipt.
- Increasingly the card never even leaves the user's hand (owner or thief)

BUT

2. If a thief stole both your signed card and checkbook, she could copy the signature and write a check to drain your account.

So based on this, I conclude that it's better (even if slightly) to leave a card unsigned. To put another way, not signing won't hurt you (nor would signing protect you in any special way), while it can prevent someone from copying your signature.

Since a signature can compromise your check, I now believe that it should not be left visible/vulnerable on the back of a card. Especially these days when people have multiple cards. It should be reserved for government/official documents, and not everyday receipts.

Need

You could just sign the back of the card differently than your official signature for the checks or legal docs. The little strip at the back is so small won't fit my signature anyway so I just draw a few circles and a line. I do the same for all the forms I have to fill out for my kid's school, new patient info, flu shot, pretty any forms. No one said you could only have 1 same looking signature.

It is not going to help anything though. I think the only fraud people committed base on copying your signature is your kids doing it to write excuses for school. All of my siblings and I could perfectly sign our parents' signatures LOL.

tmiw

On that note, another thing that I've always found weird is the number of customer-facing terminals in a such a hugely signature-preferring country* as the US. Theoretically there shouldn't be anything customer facing at all; the merchant/cashier should be the one swiping/inserting so that they can easily compare the signature like they're supposed to. With the current setup, the customer would have to give the card to the cashier after it's run, which seems inconvenient and increases the transaction time.

*Even contactless payment requires a signature an awful lot of the time despite using Apple Pay and similar on a terminal/POS that could easily support not asking for it. I suspect that merchants and/or processors have decided not to suppress that prompt, though I don't know why.

kayanco

haha, what a refreshing post
You are a creative thinker. I liked reading this.
Thank you

gr8pirate

Ours are all signed as “CHECK I.D.”

kyanar

Which is pointless, as per the merchant agreement they are forbidden to request your ID, and as it's not signed the card is not valid. The merchant agreements actually remind merchants that if a card is presented with "See ID" or similar, they are to return it and require you properly sign it before accepting it.

krazykanuck

None of the credit cards I carry are signed on the back. Also I change CCs too often to care to keep up with it. It quite frankly doesn't matter. Merchants that really care will ask for an ID along with the CC, which in my case matches. The one CC I've had compromised was one I hadn't used recently and was on another continent so it was an easy fraud catch for Citi.

fliesdelta

Is this contract clause about being unable to request ID for USA merchants?

I've been asked to show id a few times. I just show my DL, all they want to see is that the name matches. They don't take it away, or disappear with it.

kayanco

I have also read that Master/Visa contracts with merchants prohibit them from requiring ID for credit card transactions.

I've been asked for ID as well, but around 2 times in the last 10 years. I don't recall who the merchant was, but maybe they were not following the guidelines, or had some other criterion that permitted them to do so. Don't know.